In a response to growing pressure from the U.S. Congress and the international community, the Bush administration has said it hopes to resettle about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to the United States this year.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres estimates as many as 2 million Iraqis have left their country since the war began, and another 1.7 million have moved within Iraq as a result of increased sectarian violence.

The United States has taken in only 466 Iraqi refugees since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Guterres on Wednesday to outline a new U.S. program for Iraqi refugees, which includes 18 million U.S. dollars for additional funding for UNHCR to assist with resettlement of refugees in other countries and humanitarian aid.

The plan is the work of a new task force announced last week to study the Iraqi refugee issue.

U.S. Undersecretary Paula Dobriansky, who led the task force, said the United States would attempt to resettle about 7,000 Iraqi refugees from countries where they have fled from Iraq.

"The United States and the international community can best help displaced Iraqis by quelling the violence in Iraq," she said. "At the same time, we have a responsibility to respond to the immediate needs of Iraqis who have fled violence and persecution."

Dobriansky said the United States is also working to develop special provisions for resettlement of thousands of Iraqis who work for the United States in Iraq and are still there, but face increased threat because of their cooperation with the coalition.

The 7,000 Iraqis would be included as part of 70,000 refugees worldwide permitted under U.S. law to resettle in the United States each year.

U.S. Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey said that Iraqis referred to the United States from UNHCR and other countries for possible resettlement in the United States would go through rigorous security checks and health screening before being allowed to migrate.

The United States has been criticized for accepting only a small number of refugees since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Sauerbrey said that it wasn't until the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra that the sectarian violence began to reach a level that prompted large numbers of refugees to flee Iraq, and until then the need for resettlement was rather small.

Editor: Yan